Posts Tagged ‘immigration status’

Now that the Supreme Court is upholding the national health care law, it is important that immigrants know how it will effect them. Undocumented immigrants will not be able to participate in the new mandate. However, if you are a legal immigrant with a valid Green card then you are subject to the mandates requirements and must obtain health insurance in 2014.

Immigrants that are in the US via student visas and some work visas are not eligible due to their "nonimmigrant" status and will not be subject to the individual mandate. Documented immigrants must live within the United States for a total of 5 years before they are eligible for Medicaid, with exceptions for asylees and refugees and those who fall within poverty guidelines.

Citizenship

Once the new health care bill is fully implemented, it is estimated that over 30 million US residents will be without health insurance, while 11.5 million of those residents will be undocumented immigrants. That is why it is important to apply for US citizenship. If you or a loved one is seeking assistance from an experienced immigration attorney in the State of New York, contact Susan B. Henner at 1.888.733.0141 for a free consultation or more information.

DHS will formally announce this morning that it will offer deferred action to DREAMers. Preliminary information indicates that eligible applicants must:

Be 15-30 years old, and have entered before age 16

Have been present in the U.S. for 5 years as of June 15, 2012

Have maintained continuous residence

Have not been convicted of one serious crime or multiple minor crimes

Be currently enrolled in high school, graduated or have a GED, or have enlisted in the military

The deferred action offer will be available to those in proceedings as well as to those who apply affirmatively. The White House is expected to make a formal announcement this afternoon at 1:15 EST.AILA will provide further details today.

If you need assistance with an Immigration matter in NY, contact Susan B. Henner at (914) 358-5200 now for a free consultation and more information.

The PERM (Program Electronic Review Management) is a process designed to assist immigrants in obtaining an employment-based immigrant visa (“green card”) through their employment and is sometimes referred to as PERM labor certification. The PERM process began on March 28, 2005, replacing the previous paper system know as Reduction in Recruitment (RIR).

Labor Certification

Acquiring labor certification is the first stage for most employment-based green cards and is a requirement for all applicants under category employment-based preference 2 and 3 (EB2 and EB3). Labor Certification is essentially designed to help an employer test the labor market in order to ensure that all willing and able residential U.S. workers are filling all open positions for which Labor Certification is being sought. Once a PERM petition is approved, the next step for an employer is to file the immigrant petition on behalf of the foreign worker, allowing employment on a permanent basis.

What is required

The following requirements must be met in order to file the PERM Petition:

-All applications must be filed on or after March 28, 2005 and while adhering to the new PERM process and regulations.

-The employment opportunity must be a permanent, full time position.

-An official recruitment must be conducted for willing and able U.S. workers.

-Job requirements must be designated for customarily U.S. occupations, and not a foreign worker’s qualifications.

-Employers must meet the minimum wage in the area of intended employment.

-Employers must prove legitimacy.

If you are applying for a Fiance Visa

Any facet of the immigration process can be very complicated. If you or a loved one in, or outside of the United States is attempting to obtain PERM citizenship, contact NY Immigration Attorney Susan B. Henner at 1-888-733-0141 for professional assistance.

New York Immigration attorney Susan B. Henner is ready to represent individuals facing a variety of immigration issues such as removal, visa overstay, and deportation.

The highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws is The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). With up to 15 Board Members, including the Chairman and Vice Chairman who share responsibility for BIA management, the BIA decides appeals by conducting a "paper review" of cases.

Generally, the BIA does not conduct courtroom proceedings, but will hear oral arguments of appealed cases on special occasions at its headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia. The Law offices of John E. MacDonald Inc,. will assist you in presenting your Immigration Appeals against any decisions rendered by immigration judges regardless of whether you are an alien, a citizen, or a business firm.

How an Immigration Appeal works

The Board of Immigration Appeals generally reviews cases that involve orders of removal (deportation) in addition to applications for relief from removal. The majority of cases are reviewed by a single selected board member, although there are certain types of cases that are handled by special panel of three. Most appeals are the result of:

A need to clarify the meaning of a law or procedure, which will be followed in future cases

An inconsistency between the law and a decision made by an immigration judge or DHS officer.

A nationally relevant or controversial case widely considered to hold national importance

A mistake, or factual error made by an immigration judge

An inconsistency in the rulings between two or more immigration judges

If you wish to Appeal

The most typical of appeals that reach the BIA involve orders of removal and applications for relief from removal, and has standardized the process to some degree. If you or a loved one is an immigrant in the state of New York and are now facing deportation, you have the right to appeal the BIA. Please contact New York Immigration attorney Susan B. Henner today at 1-888-733-0141 or (914) 358-5200. If you wish to contact Susan by email please write to: Susan@sbhenner.com.

A federal appeals court issued an order Thursday blocking two draconian provisions of Alabama’s immigration law, H.B. 56. The order brings immediate relief to the countless Alabamians who have suffered under these provisions, which were intended "to attack every aspect" of their lives and to expel them from the state.

The court’s order first restored the right of Alabamians to enter into contracts without fear. Section 27 of H.B. 56 would effectively void any contract where one party knows or has reason to know that another party to the contract is an undocumented immigrant. Under this measure, such contracts would be unenforceable in Alabama state courts.

The Alabama law takes aim at immigrants but affects all Alabamians by destabilizing contract law, a basic building block of our civil liberties as Americans. Even U.S citizens, as well as immigrants with and without lawful status, would be viewed with suspicion and denied the right to rent a home, or to lease a car or buy a new dining table on an installment plan. If you speak English with an accent, or you somehow seem "foreign" to a landlord or a salesman, Alabama’s law would make it impossible for you to do your everyday business and to keep a roof over your family’s head. Section 27 would turn neighbor against neighbor, forcing Alabamians to view each other with suspicion based on stereotypes.

The Court also blocked Section 30 of H.B. 56, which makes it a felony for an undocumented immigrant to enter into "any transaction" with the state government. We’ve already seen the human rights crisis caused by this law. Families who tried to pay for life necessities like water and electricity were turned away by state-run utilities. Alabamians were forced to show proof of their citizenship or immigration status when paying their property taxes. And so entire neighborhoods emptied overnight as families abandoned their homes and fled with only the belongings they could carry with them. This measure worked just as the state legislature intended – it literally made it impossible for people to live in Alabama.

The federal court ruling does not only restore the civil rights of Alabamians. It also puts things back into a constitutional order. As Americans, we have the right to disagree with one another in good faith about immigration policy. But one thing is for sure, as yesterday court order demonstrates: State laws that authorize discrimination and systematic violations of the U.S. Constitution cannot stand.

Abstract:
Despite efforts to reform immigration law in the 1980s and the 1990s, the new laws passed in those decades by the Congress did not solve the long-term problems raised by undocumented people entering the United States. The issue arose anew after the terrorist attacks of September, 2001. While the advocates for immigration crackdowns in the 1980s and 1990s had cast the issue as one of economics and cultural transformation, immigration opponents after 9/11 painted a different picture: illegal immigration, they said, was a national security issue. If poor farmers from Mexico and Central America could sneak into the U.S. across the southwestern border, so could potential terrorists. This “re-branding” of illegal immigration gained significant traction on the national level, but resulted in no federal legislation. The immigration debate has now moved to the state level, with the focus on state laws such as Arizona’s SB 1070. These state laws have brought about something long sought by immigration opponents that they failed to attain in the national debates: local and state law enforcement agencies are now obligated to question people they stop about immigration status. While national security has not been the primary motivation of state lawmakers, the ironic result of these state laws will be a decrease in security against terrorists who might try to penetrate the land borders of the U.S.

A new Immigration law passed on January 6, 2012 will allow persons to apply for a provisional waiver HERE in the United States (rather than overseas). If you are in need of an Immigration Attorney in NY, contact Susan B. Henner at (914) 358-5200 or by email at Susan@sbhenner.com

Coordinator: Welcome, and thank you for standing by. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at that time you may press star then one on your touchtone telephone.

Today’s conference is being recorded. If you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. I would like to turn the meeting over to Miss Edna Ruano. Ma’am, please begin.

Edna Ruano: Thank you. Hello, my name is Edna Ruano and I’m the Chief of the Office of Communications at USCIS. Welcome to today’s call with USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas.

Before we begin the call, quickly I wanted to set some guidelines for today’s call. Please introduce yourself, your name, what media outlet you represent, and there will only be one question per reporter.

Thanks again for your participation and now I will turn it over to USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas.

Alejandro Mayorkas: Thank you, Edna, and thank you, all of you, for joining us today. We have convened this call to provide you with the opportunity to learn more about the Notice of Intent that we posted in the Federal Register this morning regarding a proposed regulatory change in the processing of Waivers of Inadmissibility. This proposed regulatory change will significantly reduce the time that U.S. citizens are separated from their spouses and children under certain circumstances while those family members are going through the process of obtaining visas to become legal immigrants to the United States.

Its purpose is to minimize the extent to which bureaucratic delays separate Americans from their families for long periods of time, specifically in cases where a Waiver of Inadmissibility due to unlawful presence is required as part of the visa process.

The proposed streamlined process will be available to spouses and sons and daughters of U.S. citizens who have accrued a certain period of unlawful presence in the United States as the waiver statute requires and can demonstrate that separation would cause an extreme hardship to their U.S. citizen spouse or parent.

The process would allow these individuals to have their waiver applications processed in the United States and receive a provisional waiver determination before they complete the visa process at a consulate outside the United States.

This proposal would not change existing laws, the requirement that immigrants leave the country to process their visas, or the standards for determining who is eligible for a Waiver of Inadmissibility.

And allow me to emphasize this last point: The law as currently written is designed to avoid extreme hardship to a United States citizen.

Existing law provides that to achieve this goal a U.S. citizen’s spouse or child who is here unlawfully can obtain a waiver and become a legal resident if their separation would cause extreme hardship to a United States citizen. We are proposing a process change to better serve the current law’s goal, a change that will reduce the time of separation and thereby alleviate the extreme hardship to the United States citizen.